“If (former President) Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Cleaver said. “There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.”

The 43 members of the CBC are concerned that Obama isn’t doing enough to help solve the rampant unemployment in the black community which was 16.7% in August and is at the highest level it has been since 1984.

Rather though that target Obama some members of the caucus have turned their ire towards the Tea Party with Rep. Maxine Waters leading the way.

Waters told attendees at one of her summer district meetings that the Tea Party “can go straight to hell” while Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) said they they were trying to hold Congress “hostage.”

If anyone is holding Congress hostage it’s the Congressional Black Caucus which rather than facing the real problem is making the Tea Party the scapegoats for their own inability to do so.